My sister said my leftover soup tasted like regret, so I tried her trick and now I get it
Look, I always thought the whole "don't throw anything away" thing meant you could just dump whatever was in the fridge into a pot and call it soup. I mean, that's what my grandma did, right? But my sister came over last Tuesday and tried my lentil and chicken soup, and she straight up told me it tasted like a wet cardboard box with salt. She wasn't mean about it, but she said the problem was I was mixing leftovers that didn't belong together, like the roasted carrots from Sunday and the leftover fish from Friday. She told me to pick one base flavor and only add things that make sense with it, so I tried it with just the chicken, some old celery, and a half onion. I also stopped adding the random half jar of salsa I always chuck in there, which I thought was genius but apparently just made everything taste like a bad taco. It was weirdly hard to break the habit, but the soup actually tasted like soup instead of a garbage can. Has anyone else had to unlearn the "everything goes in the pot" rule, or is it just me?